Clubhouse reportedly joined the list of social media companies working to protect their users in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s seizure of power by removing certain personal data.
The Verge reported that the company “reset tens of thousands of its Afghan users’ bios and photos, and made their accounts more difficult to discover in search,” following the capture of all of Afghanistan’s major cities by the Taliban over the course of just a few days.
Clubhouse disclosed the deletion of this data in a message to its Afghan users that Etilaatroz and Kabul Now publisher Zaki Daryabi shared in a screenshot on Twitter:
The company told The Verge that its removal of this information didn’t affect the user’s followers—which means they can still share information with their existing network—and that users could choose to re-share their information on the platform if they feel inclined to do so.
Facebook previously announced that it created a one-click tool for Afghan users to lock down their accounts, restricted the visibility of those users via its search tools, and provided instructions for Instagram users in Afghanistan to follow if they wanted to secure their data.
Other social networks have taken steps to protect their users, too, with Twitter reportedly working with the Internet Archive to fast-track the deletion of archived tweets and LinkedIn temporarily removing the ability to view the connections of any of its users in Afghanistan.
